Re: virus: Re: Live Nude Girls

Eric Boyd (6ceb3@qlink.queensu.ca)
Sun, 27 Jul 1997 21:58:05 -0500


Michelle Lee Gendvil wrote:

> The viewer of _LND_ is essentially an omniscient voyeur, observing
> the female "closet" moments and the "games we play". These acts are
> exaggerated in order
> to open the eyes of the "naive" female viewer, who are welcomed into
> feminist enlightement. The problem is that the naive females probably
> can't relate and won't understand. They may even laugh.

hmmm. I'm going to have to watch this movie.

> All *men* have the desire to know. An indication of this is
> the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from
> their usefulness they are loved for themselves.
> - Aristotle

I'm not out to pick a fight here, but I think you're being kind of harsh
to a long-dead guy. Something I always do when the quotation *looks*
biased is to *rewrite* it with the other pronouns, and see if that
changes the message:

All *women* have the desire to know. An indication of this is
the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from
their usefulness they are loved for themselves.
- Aristotle

Did the meaning change? Not from where I sit...

Although we cannot know what he was thinking, I do not expect that he
wanted to *deliberatly* leave women out of the "delight we take in our
senses". It was a habit; and a bad one -- one that I have as well -- to
use only the male pronoun.

Then again, maybe Aristotle was sexist. I haven't actually read any of
his stuff, so I have no idea...

A project I tryed to get off the ground in highschool was a "gender
neutral" pronoun... didn't work becuase I couldn't think of a group of
letters that actually made sense for the word. (and, of course, the
idea of reducing men and women to "it's" didn't go over well...)

So I don't know. Is it worth trying to find a word for that purpose?
Or do we continue to struggle along with the clunky "s/he" and "wo/man"
(and just how do you pronounce those??)

ERiC